Network congestion following disconnection of a mobile device from a network and subsequent reconnection to the same or a different network is a particular problem for users whose location changes, especially when travelling internationally. Ground-based networks do not move typically move but a user's mobile device moves with the user as the user travels. In such situations, the network connection may change from an essentially free wireless connection in a home or office, to a modestly priced 4G connection when moving outside of the home or office, to a lower performance 3G network in areas of lesser coverage. The network connection may fail completely in some areas or become a very expensive such as due to an international data roaming service in which network providers may take advantage of a user having no other network options in order to charge an exorbitant price per small unit of data transferred. In this last case, many users voluntarily disconnect from the network completely, sometimes for many days, if the user is unable to obtain a more economical network connection.
When applications associated with a mobile device disconnect from a network for some period of time they may, through production of local data or accumulation of data on a server to which they may connect, have a substantial backlog of data to transfer before normal levels of operation resume. Reconnection of the device to the network may result in very large volumes of data being transferred as each application begins to catch up to what has happened on the network. As a result, substantial network congestion of the connection may occur due to saturation of the connection.